When all businesses are moving online (thanks to the rousing technology), it is more than necessary to provide an outstanding user experience to keep paying customers and perhaps get more onboard. To build a remarkable online product, the UX designers develop great ideas on how to achieve that. Developers then turn these ideas into reality. But if there is no great quality assurance at the end, even the coolest products won’t make it. We all, as users, expect good quality of online products, and the competition between products is unbelievably high. That’s where you need good testers with essential QA skills.
Businesses should keep this in mind and hire good quality QA Engineers and Software Testers who use the best testing tools. The question remains what skills these QA Engineers and Software Testers need to make the online product shine and sell. Well, here are the essential ones. Please let me know in the comments below if there are more in your opinion. Let’s get started!
5 Essential QA Skills that you must know
1. Curiosity
Although curiosity killed the cat, it has always served QA folks rather well. When a company has curious Software Testers, there is a perfect chance that these QAs will understand the product (website/app) inside out. Curious QAs will look at each feature from all different angles, including the business angle (yes, the one which makes the business money). Curious QAs will be like little children discovering this world. They will try to break the product before the users do so. That will give the Developers the chance to make it unbreakable.
Curious QAs will try to understand the user journey and see where the user experience can be lacking. They will then suggest improvements and upgrades to the online product that the business people might not have come up with. Curious QAs will also be highly driven and motivated testers. They won’t lose the steam and won’t see quality assurance as a job only. It will be more of a challenge for them and a sort of fun game to play.
2. Attention to Details
When the Software Testers are detail-oriented, they can usually find all or at least most bugs in the online product. They will also find all the typos and other inconsistencies that others might miss. They will be meticulous in testing all links, logins, and signups to see that these are not broken and work when they are supposed to work. Detail-oriented QAs will bring all the minor defects to light and have them fixed while it is still easier and cheaper to do so.
Detail-oriented QAs will usually start testing the waters around the company’s internal processes as well. That means the company’s Software Tester will notice what is lacking internally and what needs to be fixed. That will allow the company to truly assure quality, not just of its product but also of its processes and internal matters.
3. Bigger Picture
Software Testers with a bigger picture view will see all the connections between the features of the online product and the product itself within the company and its market positioning. They will understand that the business is trying to solve certain users’ pain points while also making money and fulfilling all legal requirements. Bigger picture QAs will always keep all these connections in mind when testing the product to achieve more holistic quality. That, in turn, will be greatly appreciated by the users and their company alike.
In the bigger picture, Software Testers then become great candidates for Product Owners and Project Managers. They will understand the product very intimately and will see where the product development should be heading. By combining the view of the business and the needs of the user, they will be able to predict what users are willing to pay money for and what will make the business owners the most money.
4. Empathy
Great Software Testers will have empathy for the users. They will strive to achieve accessibility of the online product not just because it is part of legal requirements but also because they can put themselves into the shoes of disabled people. They will test the difficulty of online product navigation. They will also follow common sense when trying the user journeys in the product and suggest improvements.
These Software Testers will also have empathy for their team. They will understand that they need to cooperate to achieve something together. They won’t get into petty arguments with the Developers about whose fault is when there is a defect. They will support their Scrum Master and Product Owner in finding the best ways for team cooperation and for the clients/company’s product to shine and sell.
5. Enthusiasm
You can feel and connect when an online product is made with enthusiasm. It usually transpires. That applies to enthusiastic QA work as well. When your Software Testers are demotivated and frustrated, they don’t do their job perfectly. They just get by and make sure the product works. They don’t come up with ideas for improvement.
Enthusiastic Software Testers also love to learn new things.
They will educate themselves on the best testing tools and use them. They will introduce the company to automated testing as well as put in efforts to improve manual testing. And so, they will analyze the testing environment and bug reports and come up with ideas for more upswing. Such enthusiastic QAs are most likely to work smarter, pushing the company forward no matter what.
Conclusion…
So yeah, if your company would like to make online products that shine, they need to hire the right people (with some essential QA slills) to make the product this way. When it comes to the quality of the online product, that is best assured by Software Testers who are curious, detail-oriented, a bigger picture people with lots of empathy for users and their team, and enthusiasm for great products. This kind of QAs will not only make sure your product works well and looks good, but they will ensure the users of the product genuinely love it (and are willing to pay for it as repeatedly as possible).
